The Yankees’ top rivals just paid top dollar to acquire a top performer, and Brian Cashman views the situation without much complexity: It was the Red Sox’s turn.

“Where their franchise happens to be sitting versus where we happen to be sitting, they have the ability to do certain things more so than we do,” the Yankees general manager said Friday morning, as he prepared to rappel down the 22-story Landmark Building in Stamford, Conn. as part of the city’s “Heights & Lights” program. “It’s as simple as that.”

Boston guaranteed seven years and $217 million to free-agent lefty David Price, whom the Yankees know very well from his time in Tampa Bay and Toronto.

As has become his annual tradition, Cashman will rappel down the building Sunday night — Friday was just practice — and then depart for the winter meetings in Nashville, Tenn., on Monday morning. If you’re hoping the Yankees make a monster move to counter the Red Sox’s acquisition of Price, you likely will be disappointed. If you’re hoping the Yankees sign a free agent to a deal of so much as $10 million, let alone $200 million, you probably will be waiting until next winter.

“I think in terms of any significant newsworthy type of acquisition, it would be more likely on the trade front than a free-agent signing,” Cashman said. “It doesn’t mean there won’t be … [a] free-agent signing. But I think if you’re playing the odds, the odds are more likely for us to make a trade or not do anything. But we’ll see.”

With just $12.5 million coming off their books this winter, and with managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner repeatedly publicly declaring his desire to lower the team’s payroll, the Yankees have all but screamed they will be sitting out this winter’s deep free-agent market. They’re trying to put together another sustainable run, and they feel their best shot at doing so is putting their faith in younger players and letting at least some of their bad contracts run out before diving back into the deep end of the pool.

“The goal is to always win the next available world championship,” Cashman said. “We want to be world champions in 2016. If that’s not going to happen — we wanted that in 2015 and for a period of time, up till July, we looked like we had as good a chance as anyone. If it doesn’t happen in 2016, whatever we’re doing in winter 2015 needs to continue to build toward the next one, whenever it comes. If it takes till ’18, whatever we’re doing needs to put us in that position to get there.”

With trades at the forefront, Brett Gardner and Andrew Miller stand out because they are productive players with reasonable contracts. Cashman has not refuted the notion both could be used as trade chips to acquire a young starting pitcher. However, he said Friday: “I think it’s more likely that we keep them than move them. I say that recognizing that if someone wants to ring a bell that I’ve put out there, that could happen as early as [Saturday]. If I’m predicting anything, I’d predict that they’d be here. Not somewhere else.”

Two players who will definitely be Yankees in 2016, Mark Teixeira and Masahiro Tanaka, are recovering well from their respective injuries, Cashman said. Teixeira, who missed virtually the last six weeks of the season with a fractured right shin, is out of his walking boot and working out, although Cashman said he wasn’t sure whether Teixeira was running yet.

Tanaka, who underwent surgery in October to remove a bone spur from his right elbow, finished physical therapy at New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery with Mets team doctor David Altchek, who performed the procedure. Tanaka will leave for Japan this week, Cashman said, where he eventually will initiate a throwing program.

“He should be good to go in the spring,” Cashman said of Tanaka. “But I’m sure we’ll be careful with him nonetheless.”